Gene Simmons Claims Musicians Are Treated ‘Worse Than Slaves’ Because of Unpaid Radio Play

Gene Simmons feels strongly about the American Music Fairness Act, which he advocated for in a speech to members of the Senate on Tuesday (Dec. 9), during which he claimed that artists are treated “worse than slaves” when it comes to unpaid radio play.

Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, the KISS bassist — who was one of several industry professionals who weighed in on the bill at the gathering on Capitol Hill — spoke to the “injustice” of U.S. broadcast radio stations freely playing sound recordings without having to pay the performers who created them, a yearslong precedent that the AMFA would reverse if passed by Congress. “If you are against this bill, you are un-American,” he said.

“You cannot let this injustice continue,” he went on. “It looks like a small issue … But our emissaries to the world are Elvis and Frank Sinatra. And when [other countries] find out we’re not treating our stars right — in other words, worse than slaves. Slaves get food and water. Elvis and Bing Crosby and Sinatra got nothing for their performance.”

Currently, radio stations license the music they play over the air from rights organizations such as ASCAP and BMI — but they are not required to pay record labels or performing artists for the use of their tracks. Songwriters do receive royalties for radio airplay, but the artists who performed on the recordings do not.

While Simmons was likely trying to convey the severity of the issue to the Senate members, it does not compare to the horrors of slavery, especially considering that the subcommittee meeting at which he spoke took place in a neighborhood famously built through the forced labor of enslaved people. Also in D.C. is the National Museum of African American History, which features extensive exhibits detailing the torture, starvation, disease and psychological trauma enslaved people endured for centuries in the U.S. and all around the world.

But while Simmons and other industry figures argued for the equity of performers, Henry Hinton, president and CEO of small broadcast radio company Inner Banks Media, presented a different viewpoint to the senate subcommittee. “Radio is free to our listeners, but it is not free to those of us who provide it,” he told the members. “Streaming services are able to recoup costs through subscriptions and fees that they charge to their users. We cannot.”

The latest version of the AMFA was first introduced into Congress in 2021. It has earned the support of numerous artists, as well as the Recording Academy, RIAA, SoundExchange and the American Federation of Musicians.

SoundExchange CEO Michael Huppe — who also argued in favor of the bill at the Tuesday meeting — previously wrote in a guest column for Billboard, “Under the American Music Fairness Act, small and community stations would only have to pay between $10 and $500 a year to play all the music they want … Big Radio corporations want Congress to mandate that their product be installed in every new car sold in America — government intervention to protect corporate profits. Meanwhile, musicians are simply asking to be paid for their work.”

Watch Simmons’ testimony below: